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.‘Oh, I dare say,’ she said, ‘but how old is this girl?’‘Oh, I don’t think she’s very young,’ said Belinda, ‘at least, she’s about thirty, I think, which is young really, isn’t it?’Harriet seemed satisfied and hurried away to change for tea at Count Bianco’s.She came downstairs again looking very elegant in a green suit with a cape trimmed with monkey fur.She had decided to break in her new python-skin shoes.After some delay, because Harriet couldn’t walk very fast in her new shoes, they arrived at Count Bianco’s house.They had tea almost at once.The Count had ordered his cook to make all Harriet’s favourite cakes and there were four different kinds of jam.Belinda enjoyed her tea quietly while Harriet and the Count talked.Every time they visited Ricardo’s house, Belinda was struck by the excellence of everything in it.The house itself was an interesting continental-looking building with a tower at one end and balconies and window-boxes, filled at all times of the year with suitable flowers.And the garden was delightful, with its perfectly tended herbaceous borders and rockeries, a grove of lime trees and some fine Lombardy poplars.The joys of the vegetable garden, too, were considerable.Belinda wondered how anybody could remain unmoved at the sight of the lovely marrows, and the magnificent pears, carefully tied up in little cotton bags, so that they should not fall before they were ripe or be eaten by the birds.At the bottom of the vegetable garden was a meadow, which Ricardo had planted with such of his native Italian flowers as could be induced to grow in the less sunny English climate.This part of the garden was his especial delight, and on fine evenings he would sit for hours in a deck-chair reading Tacitus or Dante, or brooding over the letters of his friend John Akenside.This afternoon he was anxious that they should see a fine show of Michaelmas daisies, eight different varieties, each one a different colour and one a particularly rare one, which he had brought back from the south of France, when he was there in the spring.And he was thinking of having a pond made, for water-lilies and goldfish, and where did Harriet think would be the best place to have it?‘Oh, Ricardo, how lovely!’ said Harriet, in raptures at the thought of the pond.‘Will you swim in it? If it had a nice concrete bottom it would be quite clean, and so romantic to swim in the moonlight with the fishes.’Belinda shivered.The fishes would be so cold and slimy and besides, Ricardo didn’t do romantic things like that.‘Leigh Hunt writes rather charmingly about a fish’, she said aloud, ‘Legless, unloving, infamously chaste’; she paused.Perhaps it was hardly suitable, really, and she was a little ashamed of having quoted it, but these little remembered scraps of culture had a way of coming out unexpectedly.‘Swans would be nice,’ Harriet went on, ‘or would they eat the fishes?’Ricardo was uncertain, but said that he had thought of getting some peacocks, they would look so effective on the terrace.Harriet agreed that they would, and they moved off together, leaving Belinda bending over the Michaelmas daisies.She did not want to listen to another proposal of marriage and probably a refusal as well.It was some months since Ricardo had last proposed to Harriet and Belinda could feel that another offer was due.When they came back to the house she could tell that he had once more been disappointed.It seemed a suitable time to talk about Ricardo’s old friend John Akenside, and how he must miss him, even after all these years.Yes, indeed, Ricardo wondered at times whether his own end was near.Would Belinda come into his study and see the photograph which he meant to have as the frontispiece to his long-awaited edition of the letters of John Akenside?They went into the house, leaving Harriet to collect some plants from the gardener.Ricardo’s study gave the impression that he was a very studious and learned man.The walls were lined with very dull-looking books and the large desk covered with papers and letters written in faded ink.His task of collecting and editing the letters of his friend took up most of his time now, and it was doubtful whether he read anything but a few lines of Dante or a sentence of Tacitus.A large photograph of John Akenside stood in a prominent position on the desk, showing him in some central European court dress.He looked uncomfortable in the white uniform and faintly ridiculous, like something out of a musical comedy.Perhaps his collar was crooked or the row of medals too ostentatious to be quite convincing, for there was something indefinably wrong about it, which marred the grandeur of the whole effect.Belinda never minded laughing at this photograph, because she felt that somehow John would understand.Indeed, as she looked at the face, she thought she detected a twinkle in the eyes, which seemed to look slyly round the corners of the rimless glasses, and the mouth was curled into a half smile, self-conscious, but at the same time a little defiant.Together Belinda and Ricardo studied the portrait and for some minutes neither spoke.Then Ricardo said rather sadly, ‘I think he would have wished the world to see this one.’Belinda agreed.‘Yes, perhaps you’re right.And yet he never sought worldly glory, did he …’ she mused sentimentally.‘He was always so humble – hardly downtrodden,’ she added hastily, remembering his rather shambling gait and his fingers stained with red ink, ‘but I think he never realized his unique gifts, from which we, who were privileged to be his friends, received so much benefit …’ Belinda stopped, rather tied up in this sentence of appreciation.She felt as if she were writing his obituary notice in The Times.Being with Ricardo often made her talk like this.Of course, she thought, I believe John Akenside had a finger in nearly every European political pie at the time of his death, and yet one had never been sure what it was that he actually did.Ricardo continued the funeral oration.‘At the beginning of my edition of the letters,’ he said, ‘which will also contain a short biographical memoir, I am going to quote that beautiful opening sentence from the Agricola of Tactitus – Clarorum virorum facta moresque posteris tradere, antiquitus usitatum, ne nostris quidem temporibus quamquam incuriosa suorum aetas omisit …’ he recited solemnly in his quaint Italian pronunciation.Belinda waited patiently while Ricardo finished the complicated Latin sentence.She had never been much of a classical scholar.After he had finished there was a long silence.At last Belinda noticed that it was nearly seven o’clock and at that moment Harriet came into the room, bustling and cheerful, and carrying a basket full of rare rock plants.Her appearance seemed to cheer Ricardo and they began to talk about the care of woolly-leaved alpine plants, a conversation in which Belinda was glad to join.CHAPTER SIXOn the way home Belinda decided to call at the vicarage to see Agatha.Harriet, calculating that the curate would probably not be there, went home to make some sardine eggs for supper, as it was Emily’s evening out.Belinda found Agatha sitting in the drawing-room, mending the Archdeacon’s socks.It was a gloomy, unhomely kind of room, though Belinda could never quite decide why she did not like it.The electric light was too dim or the chair covers too drab or perhaps it was just that Agatha was there and that behind her was a bookcase, where, behind glass, was a complete set of the publications of the Early English Text Society [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]